Thirty-four years later, it remains a totally watchable charmer stuffed with amusing set-pieces - starting with a bedroom dance number to the Crystals’ 1963 hit “And Then He Kissed Me.” That’s a full three years before Martin Scorsese used it in Goodfellas. The film ultimately became a sleeper hit, not to mention a future sleepover staple. But Jeffrey Katzenberg, then head of Disney’s Touchstone Pictures, kept it in theaters throughout the summer. Opening on July 3, 1987, against the Dennis Quaid–Martin Short sci-fi comedy Innerspace (and one week after Mel Brooks’s Star Wars spoof, Spaceballs), Adventures in Babysitting landed in ninth place at the box office. “I loved that the comedy came from me just reacting to situations,” Shue says.
Along the way, they become embroiled in a car-theft ring, sing in a blues bar, tussle with a street gang, get revenge on Chris’s louse of a boyfriend (Bradley Whitford), hang at a fraternity party, narrowly avoid a run-in with the Anderson parents in the city’s diamond-shaped skyscraper, and meet a mechanic (Vincent D’Onofrio) who bears an uncanny resemblance to the Norse god of Thunder. The ho-hum gig becomes ultra-chaotic as the group - along with Brad’s horndog pal, Darryl (Anthony Rapp) - travels via station wagon to downtown Chicago to pick up Chris’s panicked best friend (Penelope Ann Miller) at the bus station. The premise was ripe for maximum high jinks: After her date night falls through, Shue’s suburban high-school senior, Chris Parker, reluctantly agrees to watch teen Brad Anderson (Keith Coogan) and his younger sister, Sarah (Maia Brewton), on a wintry Saturday. “Everyone was the girlfriend.” That’s why, in 1986, the actress - then best known for playing, ahem, the love interest in The Karate Kid - was so intent on auditioning for a comedy titled Adventures in Babysitting. “I really can’t think of any, can you?” Elisabeth Shue asks. In the mid-1980s, you were more likely to find an actual time-traveling DeLorean than a big-screen offering at the Cineplex featuring a woman in the top-billed role. Photo-Illustration: Vulture Photo by Buena Vista Pictures